Plot summary

In the 1930s Japan's nine-year-old Chiyo lives in the small fishing village of Yoroido on the coast of the Sea of Japan with her mother who is sick from bone cancer and her elderly father. It is during the Great Depression and he can barely afford to take care of Chiyo's mother. Chiyo soon meets an incredibly wealthy man who wants to give her a different life. Her father gives Chiyo and her sister, Satsu, to the wealthy man, named Mr. Tanaka, who takes them to Kyoto, where they are separated. Chiyo is sold to the Nitta okiya, a geisha house in the geisha district of Gion. Chiyo meets Mrs. Nitta, or "Mother", and Granny, the mistresses of the okiya. She befriends the okiya's other trainee, a girl she nicknames Pumpkin (おカボ), on account of how when she focuses her tongue points out of the side of her mouth, and with her round face it looks like a stem emerging from a pumpkin. Everyone later calls her Pumpkin as well, even her customers after she becomes a geisha and has her name changed officially.

With her unusual blue-gray eyes (which she got from her mother), Chiyo is to train to become a geisha, but is constantly antagonized by Hatsumomo (初桃), the resident (and only profitable) geisha of the Nitta okiya. The arrogant and selfish Hatsumomo recognizes Chiyo's potential and is upset at any hint of competition, with reason—another profitable geisha would give Mrs. Nitta the leeway to throw Hatsumomo out. Hatsumomo, therefore, does whatever she can to ensure that Chiyo does not get to train as a geisha. When Hatsumomo is drunk with her friend Korin, they force Chiyo to ruin an expensive kimono that had been stolen from Mameha (豆葉), a rival geisha who happens to be the most successful in Gion and is despised by Hatsumomo. Hatsumomo tells Chiyo to "practice [her] calligraphy" and hand the ruined kimono to Mameha's maid, not to be confused with Tatsumi who is her maid later in the story. Afterwards, she tells Chiyo the brothel where Satsu is at as a reward for ruining Mameha's kimono. Chiyo later finds Satsu, who persuades Chiyo to run away with her. Unfortunately upon return she comes upon Hatsumomo and her boyfriend. Angered that she was spying, Hatsumomo pretends to help Chiyo by tucking some money away in her sash, but then grabs her by the hair and drags her upstairs, claiming that Chiyo had stolen her emerald brooch. Mother sees through Hatsumomo's lie and finds out about the boyfriend, forbidding her to ever see him again. She happily charges Chiyo the cost of the brooch regardless. Mother locks down the okiya, preventing Chiyo from escaping. She comes up with the idea of escaping over the roof, but falls off and ends up breaking her arm. After being treated, Mother refuses to invest any more money and Chiyo dooms herself to be a maid forever. Her substantial debts and the dishonor the okiya suffers effectively stops her training. Later, Chiyo is informed by a letter from Mr. Tanaka that Satsu was able to run away. She ended up eloping with her boyfriend from Yoroido, and that they have not been heard from since. He also informs her that both of her parents are dead. Chiyo sinks lower and lower into depression, but eventually the realization that she has nothing left from her past changes her mind, and she is determined to look towards the future.

On the bridge one day pondering when a sign will come to her that tells her her destiny, an encounter with the wealthy and benevolent Chairman changes Chiyo's luck. After some kind words, he then gives her money to buy shaved ice. With the money left over, she offers it in prayer, seeing that becoming a geisha was not the point, it was to be one as a stepping stone to the Chairman. Years after, she apparently attracts the eye of Mameha—the very geisha whose kimono Hatsumomo had forced Chiyo to destroy. Chiyo assumes that Memeha's interest is purely as revenge on Hatsumomo. Mameha explains to Chiyo that, despite Hatsumomo's beauty and talent, she has never had real success. For a geisha, real success means a wealthy danna, or patron. (A danna was typically a wealthy man, sometimes married, who had the means to support the very large expenses related to a geisha's traditional training and other costs. In Memoirs, geisha are depicted as permitted to engage in intimate relationships with their danna.) Hatsumomo had angered the mistress of her tea house, and therefore would never have a patron. Mameha takes Chiyo in as her younger sister and protégé and trains Chiyo to rival Pumpkin, since Hatsumomo is Pumpkin's older sister. Hatsumomo forbids Pumpkin from speaking to Chiyo, forcefully ending their friendship. Pumpkin makes her debut as an apprentice geisha and her name is changed to Hatsumiyo, but the name Pumpkin remains throughout the story.

Chiyo's entrance into apprenticeship is marked by being given a new name: Sayuri. Mameha and Sayuri remain close, even though their relationship is tested when Mameha's danna, the Baron, after cornering Sayuri in his home, forcefully undresses her and "observes her". However, he does nothing physically and after looking at her, he helps her back into her kimono. Mr. Itchoda says this is fine, for this was not a threat to Sayuri's virginity, despite the fact that the Baron is already Mameha's danna.

Mameha orchestrates a bidding war between rich patrons for Sayuri's mizuage (interpreted in the narrative, erroneously, as a deflowering ceremony), and Sayuri's final price is more than enough to pay off her entire debt to the Nitta okiya. Mameha did this purposely so that Sayuri's mizuage would be before Pumpkin's, and that she would gain favor with Mother. Mother was planning on adopting Pumpkin. This propels her into a career as a successful geisha and earning her adoption by the mistress of the okiya, who changed her name to Nitta Sayuri. This causes even more of a rift between Sayuri and Pumpkin.

Over the years, Sayuri becomes an increasingly successful geisha, cultivating many businessmen and officials as clients. Meanwhile, Hatsumomo's reputation and status as a geisha begin to decline. Mameha and Sayuri plot to drive Hatsumomo to her breaking point, and Hatsumomo is thrown out of the okiya after attacking one of her customers, a famous Kabuki actor, in a drunken rage. She attacked him because at a party, he kissed Mameha as an example of the difference between how he and an actor in England acted on stage. Since Hatsumomo was close to him, she became furious, even though it was widely known that he was homosexual. No one ever heard from Hatsumomo again. It was rumored that she became a prostitute in the Miyagawa-cho district and later drank herself to death.

During Sayuri's encounters with the Chairman, she finds it impossible to get close to him as she desires. Instead, she finds herself constantly being pushed to be with Nobu, the Chairman's dear friend and partner. Although danna-geisha relationships are not depicted as permanent, some last for many years. Sayuri knows that men in Gion do not become the patrons of geisha who had been with their friends or coworkers: being with the otherwise likable Nobu would bar Sayuri from the Chairman, permanently.

The outbreak of World War II, a theme foreshadowed by growing reference to the Japanese military, represents structurally, another major challenge for the heroine. When the geisha districts are closed, many of the women are sent to work in the factories, a fate they are shown to fear terribly because of the frightening coughs and stained skins of the factory women. Nobu, however, finds a safer place to send Sayuri. Even so, her successes are quickly made irrelevant, and her physical beauty is tarnished by manual labor and malnutrition. However, these times also make Sayuri reflect on her life. She realizes that she could have managed even if she had stayed in her childhood village.

When Gion is ready to reopen, Nobu comes to see Sayuri, asking her for a favor. She must help entertain a minister in the new government to give Nobu and the Chairman help in recovering their business, which was damaged during the bombing of Osaka. Nobu's words make it clear that he expects to become Sayuri's danna as soon as he is again wealthy enough to do so. Although Sayuri is grateful to Nobu and otherwise fond of him, she secretly loves the Chairman.

It is not until she puts herself in an undesirable position that Sayuri's desire to be with the Chairman truly frees her to pursue her own destiny. Whilst talking with Nobu, Sayuri decides that the only way to anger Nobu in such a way that he would leave her is to sleep with another man. She decides to sleep with the minister on an island trip Nobu invited her on. She asks Pumpkin (also invited) to bring Nobu to a certain place at 9:00 where they would find Sayuri sleeping with the minister. The plan works except that Pumpkin brings the chairman instead of Nobu, claiming that she knew of Sayuri's love for him and planned it as revenge after Sayuri was adopted by Mother instead of herself.

Sayuri is invited to a teahouse assuming it is Nobu, finds the chairman. The Chairman then offers to be her danna and after talking with Mother, decides that Sayuri is to retire from being a geisha as well, the Chairman would become her danna. For a while, she accompanies the Chairman to a resort house he had purchased, and entertains him, with Mameha occasionally visiting and joining in. Sayuri later moves to New York and starts her own teahouse, where she lives out the remainder of her life.